


Everyone Needs a Phil

by dizzy



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-09
Updated: 2015-10-09
Packaged: 2018-04-25 15:46:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4966852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizzy/pseuds/dizzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>salizkhan prompted fic where you see friends/family perspective on Phil. (With Dan’s thrown in there, too.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everyone Needs a Phil

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to overcaustically for beta reading!

"I wouldn't know how to have a crisis without you, you know that?" Dan asks. “It would turn into an actual crisis.”

It's almost daybreak and they're sat on the kitchen floor. Dan's got a mug of hot chocolate in his hands and Phil has a smear of cocoa powder across his cheek. Dan's voice is raw and Phil's is gentle and soon he'll let Phil hold him but not quite just yet. 

"Why'd you say that?" Phil asks. 

"I just mean... every time I feel like things are going to shit, you're there. Sometimes just knowing that is enough to stop me from feeling bad to begin with. Just like - you're there, and I know if I felt really bad, I could go to you and you'd do what you always do." 

"What do I always do?"

Dan looks up at him. His eyes are feeling heavy now. Bed will be nice, and Phil won't fight when Dan says he wants to sleep all day. He's good like that. "Be there for me." 

*

Cat never gets the time differences right. It's gone past four in the morning when she rings. 

It doesn't wake Phil up. Not much does, except his alarm the third or so time it goes off, and sometimes Dan's mouth when he's feeling particularly clever with it. 

Dan, however, is up like a shot with his heart pounding and his mind spinning from the disorientation of departing so fast from his dreams. 

"Fuck," he groans, squeezing his eyes shut. He reaches past Phil's snoring body and grabs the phone with what would be anger if his fingers weren't still so sleep-weakened. It's Cat's face on the screen and he actually means it to be as cutting as it sounds when he says, "Somebody better be dead." 

Dan's not a morning person. He's definitely not a four am person, unless the hour creeps up before he's actually even gone to bed. 

He isn't expecting to be met with a sob from Cat, though. 

"Shit, is someone dead?" 

"N-no," she gasps out. "I just - I need to - talk." 

Dan is already shoving Phil awake. He's likes Cat, she's just fine for a laugh and a trip to the theme park and a video game battle, but they're not close - not like he can already tell this would call for. "What's wrong?" 

"My - my boyfriend- fuck, I'm sorry, I woke you up, didn't I? I'm sorry, I just, I didn't know who to call and all my girlfriends are just going to tell me I can do better and all of that self-help bullshit but right now I just want to talk to someone who will just - listen-" 

Phil squints at Dan, rubbing one eye. "What-" 

"Hold on, he's awake. Just - might be a minute before he makes sense. Hold on, all right?" 

"Okay," she says with a sniffle. 

Dan mutes the phone so she can't hear him talk to Phil. "It's Cat. Some kind of relationship disaster or something. She's... crying." 

He says the last part like it's a terminal disease. Phil lets out a mighty yawn and sits up, taking the phone. By the time he unmutes it and says in that gentle (if slightly deeper than normal) Phil voice, "Alright, now. Dan says you're having some trouble?" 

Dan's awfully annoyed that he's been woken up and that he's going to have to go back to sleep in an empty bed but as his eyes shut and his heart thuds back to a normal beat, he still has to smile at how he can hear Phil even down the hall and in the lounge, talking to Cat in that soothing voice of his. 

*

The first time Phil travels home with Dan for the holiday season, it's an adjustment for everyone. 

Phil just hasn't spent much time around them. It's not anyone's fault, really; Dan doesn't visit home with nearly the regularity as Phil does. He's only seen them a few times over the years, and he hasn't been an overnight guest since the days of long train journeys being the only way they really got to spend time together. Now Dan's bedroom isn't really Dan's bedroom and Dan's little brother is not so little anymore and Phil catalogs the differences, comparing the now with hazy memories of times past. 

Dan's mum is nice, though. She always has been. A little bit weird with her sense of humor, but Phil's even charmed by that because he can tell how much she's influenced Dan. (Even if back when they first met, being told he was so much like his parents was the last thing Dan really wanted to hear.) 

She's nicer now than she was before, and he's not sure why until she blurts it out in the kitchen. She's making dinner and Phil's making tea for three, having abandoned Dan and his brother to a battle Mario Kart style. Dan's brother's better than he is and it pleases Phil endlessly, though he'll make all the right noises about being on Dan's side. 

"You know, back when you first met, Dan's father and I didn't know what to make of you at all." She looks at him. He's sort of struck by how she just looks like any person he'd see on the street, and not be intimidated by at all. She's not as old as his own mum and probably looks younger even than she is. He can see traces of Dan's features in her face but mostly in the way she looks at the world and the slightly too fast way she talks when she's nervous. "You were this older fellow from the internet that Dan kept running off to be with, and when he said he wanted to move to Manchester - we were thrilled he was going into uni at all, but we were worried too, you know? Worried he was being rushed into something he wasn't ready for." 

"You thought I was... rushing him?" Phil asks, slightly hesitant. It’s not like he hadn’t been worrying about similar things all the way back in the start, though. It’s just that he hasn’t really thought about that period of their life like that in a long time.  

“But there was no telling Dan what to do. His father and I, we always figured, he was a good enough kid? Didn't get in too much trouble. So we gave him more freedom than we should have, maybe. But we still worried, and sometimes we tried. You just can't go so very long letting a teenage boy do what he wants then try to give him rules. But we tried." 

"Of course you did," Phil reassures her. "But Dan was fine, you know. He was always going to be fine." 

"I'm just - I'm not sure if he was, really." She looks at him again, and she's tearing up a little, and Phil hopes it's just at her own nostalgia and not something he's done or said or hasn't said. "We had that fight, I'm sure you remember - when we… suggested… he was spending too much time with you." 

"I remember," Phil admits. He remembers sitting in his own bedroom at the old house in Manchester listening to Dan cry tears of frustration and putting all his energy into making Dan laugh so he wouldn't have to think himself on how gutted he'd feel not having Dan's visits to look forward during the lonely weeks. "But he didn't stay mad at you long, really." 

"Not once we had you down for a visit." She smiles, patting a hand dry on a cloth and reaching out to squeeze his fingers in her own, smaller ones. Phil is remembering that conversation too, how nervous Dan was inviting Phil to meet his family, but how he’d been able to tell that it mattered to Dan. He might have wanted to project being too cool and above it, but he’d wanted his family to like Phil and Phil had desperately wanted to be liked by Dan’s family. He’d wanted the approval. "And I was still worried, because he's my little boy, but I didn't have to be, did I?" 

"Dan could take care of himself then." Phil smiles fondly, because now he's remembering how hard Dan tried to be independent that first semester at uni, how he would only sleep over a few nights a week because he wanted the dorm experience, how he tried to learn how to cook because he felt like takeaway every meal was cheating, how he insisted on going out with those 'friends' he's never spoken to since even though Phil could tell by the way he always lingered on Phil's sofa where Dan would rather be. 

"But he didn't need to, did he?" Dan's mum says. She's holding his hand properly now, a little too tightly. "Because he had you there, and you weren't going to let anything happen to him. You took care of him." 

Phil doesn't say how he was older than Dan back then but really at the same level in life. He doesn't say how he quite often felt like Dan was actually better at being on his own than Phil was. Dan wasn't the one that almost cried at missing his old bed. Dan wasn't the one that would check his locks five times a night convinced that someone was going to burst in. Dan wasn't the one that hated the loneliness of an empty bedroom. But none of that is very important right now. 

"Of course I did," Phil says. "And I'll keep on doing for as long as he'll let me." 

*

Phil hasn't heard from Charlie in years. 

He doesn't follow Charlie on twitter or facebook anymore. They don't run in the same circles, those old friendships having fallen by the wayside for so many reasons. 

(He's told he's less approachable now. Phil understands it even though he acts like he doesn't sometimes, because he knows that sometimes it's easier to pretend to be ignorant to someone's feelings than have to address them in a way that would just hurt someone.) 

He hasn't heard from Charlie in years but he's in the middle of editing a video and suddenly his phone jumps to life with an old familiar number. It's not in his contacts anymore but some things stick with you, and for Phil he always remembers things associated with strong emotion more than anything else. He's briefly jolted into memories of sitting in his dorm university and grinning into a pillow over the cute new boy he thinks maybe he likes him.

It almost makes him feel sorry for himself so many years ago, because in the end Charlie hadn't been the right boy for him and it all worked out just fine for Phil but he had no way of knowing that at the time. It's hard not to compare Charlie to Dan, but he always feels like it's unfair to anyone to be compared to Dan. Dan is on another level in Phil's life, something no one else will ever touch. But back then Charlie was still something to him. 

Charlie hurt him back when he picked another boy over Phil, but Phil got over that. He was fine being friends with Charlie, if what Charlie needed was a friend. Then Charlie hurt Dan and that's one thing Phil can't really stand for in his life. 

He lets the phone call go to voicemail, but there is no message left. The caretaker in Phil, the one that takes on responsibility for everyone around him, whispers an urgent plea for Phil to pick the one up and return the call. But when his fingers move it's only to delete it from his call log, just so Dan doesn't see it and needlessly worry. Charlie will be fine, he tells himself. Charlie will have other people in his life. 

Phil could have been what Charlie needed, but the timing was just never quite right. 

*

Dan's innocently leaning down to plug in his Macbook charger when he feels a resounding slap to his bum. He yelps and jumps and turns around, mouth open. "Someone's cheeky today." 

Phil smirks and hooks his fingers through Dan's belt loops to tug him in. His hands then smooth over Dan's hips, past his pockets and down a bit to sink his fingers in for a proper grope. 

"Definitely feeling something... cheeky." Phil pokes his tongue out of the corner of his mouth in that way Dan is morally obligated to groan at even though he actually finds it adorable and they both know that. That spot is still damp when Dan leans in for a kiss, slightly off center so he's more kissing Phil's bottom lip than anything. But he likes it, he likes all their kinds of kisses. 

There's a moment here where it could go two ways. Either one of them has something they actually need to be doing and the kiss is closed out with a playful smack of the mouths or a tight squeeze of a hug and that's just that, or... 

Or Dan steps in closer and Phil's eyes slip shut a bit and the kiss goes deeper, an unhurried desire for something more beginning to build. 

This is the second kind of kiss. It's the kind where they kiss once, part to smile, to check and make sure they're on the same page, then kiss again, and again, and again, just standing in the lounge with Dan's hands wandering up the back of Phil's shirt and Phil's hands sliding down between the belt-less waist of Dan's trousers and the boxer briefs clinging to his ass. They kiss and touch and let it crackle until Dan tilts his head to the side and brushes his lips across Phil's jaw and whispers, "Bedroom?" 

"Yeah," Phil says, stealing one more kiss to the corner of Dan's mouth. "Just give me a minute here." 

"Why?" Dan asks, surprised. 

Phil motions over his shoulder at the large clear pitcher on the table. "I was just about to water the plants when your bum distracted me." 

"Phil, the plants can wait until after _sex_ ," Dan says, stressing the last word. 

Phil frowns. "No, they need me to water them. It's watering time. They're thirsty." 

"How do you know?" 

"My phone reminder went off."  

Dan sighs. "The plants need you," he repeats with a put out tone. "Well, your boyfriend, who also needs you, will be fingering himself on your bed when you're done tending to your actual true loves." 

He takes satisfaction in Phil's whine as he walks away. 

*

Phil visits home more than his brother does. 

His brother calls him a mummy's boy. His mum says that's just how she likes it and pats Phil on the shoulder. She does, though. She likes it like that and Phil knows it. She brightens right up every time he comes around, because he knows he's been out of the house for five years now but she still misses her boys. 

Phil was the kid who brought in flowers from someone else’s garden and made every picture in school just for her and dragged his father around five different shops until he found the best presents for birthdays and Christmas. 

He still drags Dan around to nearly every shop. He’s not satisfied until she has the perfect gift to make her know that she’s special. She calls him at least once a day and he always answers, if he can. His brother - not so much. 

Martyn wanted freedom and to embrace life as soon as he had the chance. Phil was more the type who wanted to stay at home for as long as he could, because the world felt too scary for him and home was safe. If he’s being honest, only the freedom to have Dan in a place to himself really pushed him to move out. But even those first years when they were all still in Manchester, Phil was home for dinner at least a couple times a week. Dan usually came with him, because Dan liked how Phil’s family operated and they both liked having a nicely home cooked meal. (They both still do.) 

Sometimes he plans the visit now out well in advance, and sometimes it’s just the day before and he wakes up missing his family. That’s new house isn’t his home anymore. This is his home, here, with Dan. But family is a different kind of home and he still gets homesick for that the same way she gets homesick for him when he’s away. 

"You’re always welcome here,," she tells him, clinging tight. “You know I always want you here. You're my baby boy.” 

He breathes in her perfume and smiles and hugs her back. "Always will be." 

*

Phil gets recognized less when he's out alone. 

He's not bitter about it. It makes like a little easier, in practical ways. He can pop in to the shop and back home without any kind of fuss. Photos never really show up online when it's just him by himself. He's got a kind of anonymity he likes, mostly. 

That's why he's surprised to be standing in the coffee shop line on a Sunday morning (waiting on the morning drinks he's going to surprise Dan with) and hear a gasp and the sound of a drink splattering against the ground. He turns and there's a girl looking stricken. It's a look he's seen before, at countless conventions over the years, at train stations and airports, any time he's out with Dan. 

She's dropped her overpriced drink and her face goes from white to red and she still hasn't said anything. Phil knows she's a fan but he still doesn't want to assume so he just gives her a smile and says, "Oh, let me help you clean that up." 

He grabs a wad of paper towels from the dispenser and kneels, starting to swipe at the mess. Some of it soaks into the knee of his trousers and leaves his skin cold so he dabs at that too then looks up and laughs when he sees her watching him. "I'll start a new fashion trend." 

She laughs too, just a little. "It'll be the next big thing." 

An employee from the shop comes over with a mop and they both step away. The mess was really too big for the two of them to handle, anyway. 

She looks at him like he wants to say something again but the words don't come out. He gives her an even brighter smile and says, "Let me get you another drink." 

"Oh, no-" She's flustered, but he insists, letting her repeat her order to the barista then handing over enough money to cover it. When they step back to where the prepared drinks will arrive she says again, "Thank you. You're so - wow." 

He gives her a sheepish smile and a shrug. "I wouldn't want anyone to have to face the day without their coffee." 

"I love coffee," she says. "And - youtube." 

He grins. "As it happens, I do, too." 

"You just..." She trails off, then groans and covers her face with her hands. "I don't know what I'm saying. I'm never telling anyone about this. And I have to go to work with coffee on my skirt." 

Phil sees his drinks are ready but doesn't reach for them just yet. "You can always lie. Say you were battling a mountain goat on the moon when some clumsy youtuber pummeled right into you and knocked your drink about." 

"I'm not sure my wanker of a boss would be any more forgiving of that." She dabs at her skirt again. 

Her drink arrives too. Phil grabs it first, along with the marker the baristas use to write names on the cups. He delicately holds hers up and scribbles along the side of it, handing it back to her freshly decorated with a work excuse addressed to her boss that not only involves mountain goats on the moon but flamethrowers and a truly 'amazing' martial arts performance by his star employee. 

She laughs so hard her eyes are damp when she's finished. That's the kind of fangirl tears Phil doesn't mind inspiring. 

He gives her a hug and a pat on the back before picking up his and Dan's drinks. Just before he's out the door she calls out, "Phil?" 

He turns around, almost tripping over nothing. "Yes?" 

"The world needs people like you," she says. She smiles, an actual genuine one. "Thank you." 

He heads back home feeling like he's the one who has just been done a favor. 

*

Once in a while, Phil starts to feel overwhelmed. 

He has it all planned it. He has a partner that he loves so fucking much, and one that’s the best friend he’s ever had or could ever hope to have. He has a job that offers a reprieve from the threat of static day to day monotony. He has money, more than he needs, more than enough. He has plans. He and Dan, they'll get that house in the next year or two, and one of them will buy a ring and that'll be that sorted, and once the dust around them settles then the rest can be thought about. The dog and the kids and the happily ever after that they're both sort of yearning for while also in no hurry to overlook what life has to offer them now. 

But then Phil starts to look at his life and how many dominoes are so carefully lined up and he starts to think about what would happen if one toppled. His mind gets wrapped up in how terrifying that ripple effect would be. 

He's not Dan. He doesn't find a creative outlet in the existential. He just gets upset, stomps around, refuses to talk about what is wrong. But Dan gets it, by now. He understands that Phil's brights are brighter but his darks are darker, too. He understands when is the time to sit Phil down, hold him down if necessary, ground him to the spot and kiss him hard and make him forget. 

“Phil,” Dan whispers, and Phil clings tighter to him. He’s afraid of a lot of things. He’s got insecurities and self-doubt and questions about how much he’s really capable of, worries that he’s just fooling everyone around him into thinking he’s worth all this. He’s terrified when he stops to think of all the things there are to be afraid of, but - never Dan. With every fibre of his being he knows that Dan loves him, and Dan is there for him, and Dan is going to be strong with him when Phil can’t be strong alone. 

Dan always knows just what to do, and that's why everyone might need a Phil - but all Phil needs is Dan. 

**Author's Note:**

> [Read/reblog on tumblr!](http://slightlyphizzier.tumblr.com/post/130844225794/everyone-needs-a-phil)


End file.
